The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for processing session data within a computer network.
Session Border Controllers (SBC's) are becoming increasingly popular for facilitating devices on either sides of the Session Border Controllers to remain unaware of each others' existence, particularly in Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) deployments whereby the inside user-agents (UAs) are configured with the SBC's inside-address as its proxy/registrar address and directs all signaling traffic to the SBC, which in turn ensures that this traffic reaches the actual proxy/registrar (as configured in its database) and vice-versa.
There are solutions like IP-IP GW that terminate and regenerate sessions at the SBC. When a call signaling packet is received from a first end node at the SBC, the SBC performs several operations that require a significant amount of resources, especially as the number of sessions handled by such SBC increases. For each call signaling flow, the SBC closes and manages the stack associated with the session that is conducted between the first end node and the SBC and also creates and manages a new stack for the session that is conducted between the SBC and the second end node. That is, another socket needs to be opened for the session between the SBC and the second node.